I think this is the worst story of seasons game they ever released
Buen juego para introducirse al género de los juegos de granjitas, con objetivos asumibles y progresión rápida, pero se queda muy lejos del rey del género (Stardew Valley)
fun and cute, very addictive gameplay loop. gets a bit overwhelming and drudgey/grindy sometimes. I hate how fast the clock moves but i love organizing and managing the farm.
Poot
damon my beloved
Love this as much as Stardew Valley!
The game has some neat ideas, but… not very well executed. The crafting system is a giant pain and caring for your animals boils down to just pressing A. The villagers are pretty bland as well.
The biggest disappointment are the DLCs, which basically add tiny areas with some characters from previous games.
Though I think it‘s great that the devs listened to the players and tried to fix some of the issues, the patches didn‘t help me enjoying the game more.
The biggest disappointment are the DLCs, which basically add tiny areas with some characters from previous games.
Though I think it‘s great that the devs listened to the players and tried to fix some of the issues, the patches didn‘t help me enjoying the game more.
This game is baffling after the huge step up Trio of Towns was over the laggy, annoying design decision-riddled mess SoS. And no matter how cumbersome SoS was, the characters still had depth in that and the game mechanics still functioned. Pioneers of Olive Town is the worst of all worlds: everything is a cardboard cut out, runs like garbage on switch, and it is not a farming game at all.
You will spend most of your time parked next to some kind of crafting machine to feed it materials because you can only craft things one at a time. Farming has been so nerfed, there are no longer festivals/competitions for it or livestock. All your crops will basically go toward tediously crafting thing upon thing and I'm not entirely sure to what end.
There are no characters in this game. They're all soulless robots who just happen to occupy the space outside your farm. Night and day difference from the wholly pleasant and memorable cast of ToT.
Between this and RF5, I guess I'm just going to have to replay RF4 and ToT until I die.
You will spend most of your time parked next to some kind of crafting machine to feed it materials because you can only craft things one at a time. Farming has been so nerfed, there are no longer festivals/competitions for it or livestock. All your crops will basically go toward tediously crafting thing upon thing and I'm not entirely sure to what end.
There are no characters in this game. They're all soulless robots who just happen to occupy the space outside your farm. Night and day difference from the wholly pleasant and memorable cast of ToT.
Between this and RF5, I guess I'm just going to have to replay RF4 and ToT until I die.
The fast-moving days and energy bar stress me out
Fun game, just kind of what something like this with a tad bit more polish.
Behind the occasional poor performance is one of the more in depth farming sims out there with a new crafting system to make every resource feel valuable. Some of the minigames feel a bit pointless and distract from the addictive routine you find yourself in. The characters aren't as endearing as some of the previous SoS/Harvest Moon games and the lack of acknowledgement of your relationship by the characters you romance leaves you feeling like the relationship is only actually happening in cutscenes.
Outside of some of the gripes though the moment to moment routine of the game is very in depth and addicting and probably the most refined version of the farming sim formula.
Outside of some of the gripes though the moment to moment routine of the game is very in depth and addicting and probably the most refined version of the farming sim formula.
It doesn't have the charming cast of Friends of Mineral Town, and it has less features and polish than Trio of Towns, so it's a notable downgrade from the most prior entries. It has a unique feel for the series however. Most of the games are quite relaxed, while this is incredibly busy. There's lots of timers, crafting, and planning, and while I personally enjoy this change of pace, the issue is that this game then feels like it's competing with My Time at Portia, which is better in every way. Overall, there's little reason to play this game unless you just wish to play every entry in the series like me.
Even with the PC version fixing everything, and it being an alright game, it misses a lot of charm of other Story of Seasons titles and feels like a massive step backwards compared to Trio of Towns.
my first "story of seasons" & was actually really good! the controls were nice for a switch game to play in bed before sleepies~
i liked it bc it's story of seasons but i feel like it needs a lot of work. i don't think i'll ever actually finish it but i'll play it from time to time.
I mean, if you get the pc version and mod it up? It might be nicer but the makers rlly do not help the game
Lots of fun, quite enjoyable. They took a lot of elements from newer farming/life sims, primarily My Time In Portia, and it was definitely for the better.
If you're a completionist like yours truly, chances are you will curse the hell out of whoever came up with that Cow Helm bullshit. It took me over 200 hours of gameplay for that damn sprite to finally give it to me. I mean, I really like this game even though some stuff are quite annoying like those debris growing faster than I can complain about them but the Cow thingy is clearly some kind of punishment. If you think you're going to Hell, you should go for the Helm cause you will definitely be forgiven.
[Main Story] + [Married Neil]
**
A farming simulator where crafting and cooking is also part of the game’s progress. Where there are several candidates for a possible romance whether of the same sex or not. In our farm there are three areas to unlock where in the progress of the game we can upgrade the house, acquiring various pets such as cats and dogs, decorating the house with some limitations, taming or buying animals for our farm such as cows, sheep and others having the option to breed. With 4 seasons having an impact on what we grow and fish, not forgetting that we can buy clothes or change our look. This game still has side quests for us to do either from the inhabitants or spirits that live in the place. And even after completing the “main story” of the game, there is always something to do or complete. If you like this type of simulator I think you should buy it, however don’t expect it to be Animal Crossing.
**
A farming simulator where crafting and cooking is also part of the game’s progress. Where there are several candidates for a possible romance whether of the same sex or not. In our farm there are three areas to unlock where in the progress of the game we can upgrade the house, acquiring various pets such as cats and dogs, decorating the house with some limitations, taming or buying animals for our farm such as cows, sheep and others having the option to breed. With 4 seasons having an impact on what we grow and fish, not forgetting that we can buy clothes or change our look. This game still has side quests for us to do either from the inhabitants or spirits that live in the place. And even after completing the “main story” of the game, there is always something to do or complete. If you like this type of simulator I think you should buy it, however don’t expect it to be Animal Crossing.
nao.
Favourite farming game I've played, I unintentionally ruined this series for myself by playing this first now the rest feel awful to play.
I love my Wife Laura and our lovely Daughter Nagatoro
I love my Wife Laura and our lovely Daughter Nagatoro
its ok. parts of it are fun. the crafting/customization is like. restrictive. it lags on the switch. the npcs have no personality at all :/ a good pickup if you want a bit of a change in playstyle for SoS style games but it doesn't really have much in the charm.
STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town nos propone una aventura relajante que se ambienta en Villa Oliva y que pone de manifiesto la importancia de pasar el rato y entablar relaciones de amistad y de compañerismo. Es lo más parecido a una llamada a la tranquilidad. Limpiar, labrar, plantar y regar serán solo algunas de las tareas a realizar. Si bien, el resto de la aventura es mucho más que eso, gracias a su dimensión social y a la importancia de la interacción con otros personajes.
Una ciudad portuaria ubicada en la costa de la península lista para explorar, que cambia con las estaciones, y con actividades que podemos hacer. Un argumento que quiere transmitir una sensación de calma y felicidad. Porque STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town nos habla de las pequeñas cosas que nos gustan, de hablar con las personas, con una sensación de calidez que quiere sacarnos una sonrisa mientras desempeñamos los distintos quehaceres diarios en la granja de nuestro abuelo.
Análisis completo: https://www.ningunaparte.com/analisis-story-of-seasons-pioneers-olive-town/
Una ciudad portuaria ubicada en la costa de la península lista para explorar, que cambia con las estaciones, y con actividades que podemos hacer. Un argumento que quiere transmitir una sensación de calma y felicidad. Porque STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town nos habla de las pequeñas cosas que nos gustan, de hablar con las personas, con una sensación de calidez que quiere sacarnos una sonrisa mientras desempeñamos los distintos quehaceres diarios en la granja de nuestro abuelo.
Análisis completo: https://www.ningunaparte.com/analisis-story-of-seasons-pioneers-olive-town/
Had lot of fun, still playing for the second time
The farming and progression aspect of leveling up your abilities and unlocking new parts of your farm is very fun, but interacting with the townsfolk sucks. They have zero personality and repeat the same boring one-note dialog every time you speak to them. It's extremely disappointing considering I've been a long time fan of the series and this is probably the first game I've given up playing before getting married.
I heard that they're gonna update the dialog so if they do I might pick this back up, but for now I'm shelving it.
I heard that they're gonna update the dialog so if they do I might pick this back up, but for now I'm shelving it.
This review contains spoilers
I played this after all of the patches were released. Apparently there are significant quality of life updates in those patches.
That said, this game as of all the patches coming out is just fine. I'd go so far as to call it "mid". Yeah, it's not the worst game in the series, but the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "why am I not playing a better Story of Seasons game?"
There's just not much meat here. The world design is very simple and feels very small, there are 2 main areas: the town and the farm. The town is very centralized and you find people walking outside or along the beach. There's a few shops, including one that you can expand (the character customization shop). As a result, the world feels small and confined, and the farming and social aspects of the game feel completely disconnected from each other.
Most of your time is going to be spent on the farm. The farm is massive, due to the robust crafting element in this game--every item you collect off the ground is going to be coming from your farmland. The 3 mines are also only accessible from your own farmland.
Crafting and designing your farm is very much the gimmick here. Unfortunately, the development of this game was largely outsourced to a small studio that is best known for licensed mobile games (I believe they did a couple sega mobile games), which means that the crafting mechanics are heavily influenced by mobile game design. There's more than a dozen maker machines, and each one makes a different item, and each one is on a timer than can only process one item at a time. Meaning you need to have several of each kind of maker on your farm to get anything done in a timely manner. If you want to make silver bars, for example, you need to input 5 silver ores to the ore processing machine and wait for the bar to be done (this will take the better part of an in-game day). So if you need 3 silver bars, you either have to wait multiple days for the maker to process 15 ores, or you need to build 3 ore makers to process those 15 ores at the same time. However, if you want to make more ore makers, you need 3 logs for each material, which means you need to spend time and stamina to knock down trees to collect logs. As you progress in the game, makers begin requiring refined materials to craft them, such as silver bars. It creates a chain of many different makers, and the need for storage for each material at different steps in the process. By the time i got a reasonable workflow going for basic materials, my screen started lagging whenever my maker quarantine zone was on screen.
The other big aspect of this game is inventory management. Managing inventory is the thing i spent the most time on in this game, even with the biggest bag, and it drove me nuts. The very limited fridge is the only storage you have in your house, and you can only increase fridge storage by upgrading your house. You can create more storage boxes but they can only be placed outside on your farm.
While the loop of collecting materials and processing them to refined materials and then using them to craft new materials or cooking ingredients is well-constructed, it ends up being more addictive than actually fun. My gameplay started revolving around feeding the makers new materials so i could keep getting refined materials. Nothing I get from the loop felt worth the effort I was putting in to keeping the loop going.
The other aspect of this game I find disappointing is the social aspect. I found the characters somewhat bland, even for a Story of Seasons game. Many of the marriage candidates have similar voices and personailities, so they don't stand out much from each other. I found keeping my production loop going to be way more compelling than taking valuable mining time out of my day to run up to the town and talk to people.
Related, the story is the weakest element of this game by far, and can be fully completed before the end of the first year. Essentially, you provide refined materials to the city so that they can improve the city to attract more tourism. Ocassionally this will involve something interesting like opening a new shop, but in most cases the only change to the town will be cosmetic (the streetlights or the cobblestone roads change to a different model or texture, for example). Once you complete the handful of these material requests, the "story" is over, but you can keep playing as you were before. It feels like one of many missed opportunities.
Some things I did end up liking: I adore the ability to mix and match "feminine" and "masculine" model elements such as stance, clothing, hair, etc; the ability to marry any marriage candidate regardless of gender; the abiloty to run around with your pet; upgrading tools is immensely rewarding; the mining feels good and there's three different mines to explore; the fishing system is fun and involves a bit of skill which makes it engaging; and the progression of unlocking new recipes is well-built.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of potential in this game, and it's clear the developer is taking some positive direction from other farming sims such as stardew valley. But frankly there's other Story of Seasons games that do what this game is trying to do better.
Ultimately, this feels like a very hollow mobile game experience draped in Story of Seasons wallpaper.
That said, this game as of all the patches coming out is just fine. I'd go so far as to call it "mid". Yeah, it's not the worst game in the series, but the entire time I was playing it I kept thinking "why am I not playing a better Story of Seasons game?"
There's just not much meat here. The world design is very simple and feels very small, there are 2 main areas: the town and the farm. The town is very centralized and you find people walking outside or along the beach. There's a few shops, including one that you can expand (the character customization shop). As a result, the world feels small and confined, and the farming and social aspects of the game feel completely disconnected from each other.
Most of your time is going to be spent on the farm. The farm is massive, due to the robust crafting element in this game--every item you collect off the ground is going to be coming from your farmland. The 3 mines are also only accessible from your own farmland.
Crafting and designing your farm is very much the gimmick here. Unfortunately, the development of this game was largely outsourced to a small studio that is best known for licensed mobile games (I believe they did a couple sega mobile games), which means that the crafting mechanics are heavily influenced by mobile game design. There's more than a dozen maker machines, and each one makes a different item, and each one is on a timer than can only process one item at a time. Meaning you need to have several of each kind of maker on your farm to get anything done in a timely manner. If you want to make silver bars, for example, you need to input 5 silver ores to the ore processing machine and wait for the bar to be done (this will take the better part of an in-game day). So if you need 3 silver bars, you either have to wait multiple days for the maker to process 15 ores, or you need to build 3 ore makers to process those 15 ores at the same time. However, if you want to make more ore makers, you need 3 logs for each material, which means you need to spend time and stamina to knock down trees to collect logs. As you progress in the game, makers begin requiring refined materials to craft them, such as silver bars. It creates a chain of many different makers, and the need for storage for each material at different steps in the process. By the time i got a reasonable workflow going for basic materials, my screen started lagging whenever my maker quarantine zone was on screen.
The other big aspect of this game is inventory management. Managing inventory is the thing i spent the most time on in this game, even with the biggest bag, and it drove me nuts. The very limited fridge is the only storage you have in your house, and you can only increase fridge storage by upgrading your house. You can create more storage boxes but they can only be placed outside on your farm.
While the loop of collecting materials and processing them to refined materials and then using them to craft new materials or cooking ingredients is well-constructed, it ends up being more addictive than actually fun. My gameplay started revolving around feeding the makers new materials so i could keep getting refined materials. Nothing I get from the loop felt worth the effort I was putting in to keeping the loop going.
The other aspect of this game I find disappointing is the social aspect. I found the characters somewhat bland, even for a Story of Seasons game. Many of the marriage candidates have similar voices and personailities, so they don't stand out much from each other. I found keeping my production loop going to be way more compelling than taking valuable mining time out of my day to run up to the town and talk to people.
Related, the story is the weakest element of this game by far, and can be fully completed before the end of the first year. Essentially, you provide refined materials to the city so that they can improve the city to attract more tourism. Ocassionally this will involve something interesting like opening a new shop, but in most cases the only change to the town will be cosmetic (the streetlights or the cobblestone roads change to a different model or texture, for example). Once you complete the handful of these material requests, the "story" is over, but you can keep playing as you were before. It feels like one of many missed opportunities.
Some things I did end up liking: I adore the ability to mix and match "feminine" and "masculine" model elements such as stance, clothing, hair, etc; the ability to marry any marriage candidate regardless of gender; the abiloty to run around with your pet; upgrading tools is immensely rewarding; the mining feels good and there's three different mines to explore; the fishing system is fun and involves a bit of skill which makes it engaging; and the progression of unlocking new recipes is well-built.
Honestly, I think there's a lot of potential in this game, and it's clear the developer is taking some positive direction from other farming sims such as stardew valley. But frankly there's other Story of Seasons games that do what this game is trying to do better.
Ultimately, this feels like a very hollow mobile game experience draped in Story of Seasons wallpaper.
Played on a Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite. 35 hours played, hit credits.
Story of Seasons is taking a ton of hints from the other games inspired by the franchise. They do a ton of new things in this game. Sadly, a lot of it is terribly unbalanced and I ended up becoming rich by the end of Summer.
Everything being unisex is awesome and allowing all customization options being available to each gender is wonderful, including voices. Allows players to really make the character they want.
Characters are fine. The town layout is easy to follow. No more Milker or sheers taking up a tool slot (there’s also a tool pouch). You can take photos of animals, people, whatever. I never feel like I have too little time, to be honest, I feel like I have too much time on occasion.
There’s a lot of good and bad with this game. I do enjoyed it plenty but the unbalances between money and progress is really noticeable. I didn’t even finish the first year and hit the credits. There’s a lot to do, nonetheless. If you like story of Seasons like I do, it’s a good bet you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not into the genre, you might want to skip it or grab it on sale. I’ve enjoyed my time with the game but it wasn’t Stardew or Friends of Mineral Town’s remake.
Story of Seasons is taking a ton of hints from the other games inspired by the franchise. They do a ton of new things in this game. Sadly, a lot of it is terribly unbalanced and I ended up becoming rich by the end of Summer.
Everything being unisex is awesome and allowing all customization options being available to each gender is wonderful, including voices. Allows players to really make the character they want.
Characters are fine. The town layout is easy to follow. No more Milker or sheers taking up a tool slot (there’s also a tool pouch). You can take photos of animals, people, whatever. I never feel like I have too little time, to be honest, I feel like I have too much time on occasion.
There’s a lot of good and bad with this game. I do enjoyed it plenty but the unbalances between money and progress is really noticeable. I didn’t even finish the first year and hit the credits. There’s a lot to do, nonetheless. If you like story of Seasons like I do, it’s a good bet you’ll enjoy it. If you’re not into the genre, you might want to skip it or grab it on sale. I’ve enjoyed my time with the game but it wasn’t Stardew or Friends of Mineral Town’s remake.
id be unstoppable if i could date Angela. queen i'd treat you right.
The game was really lacking. I think they tried too hard to take inspiration from Stardew Valley.
this game broke on my wedding day, the cutscene wouldn't load. and I'm still pissed off about that. as a result of such, I do not recommend this game to anyone.
apparently this is fixable if you remove the DLC, but this issue can happen with other parts of the game. heard of it happening with the egg festival, and also happening in the mines. also, what if you wanted to marry a DLC character? bullshit. as a result of such an issue, I say this game kind of sucks ass, and is really not worth your time/money. even if you're prepared for the possibility of a cutscene not loading and being unable to progress, I still don't really recommend it. there are better games you can play that don't have this issue.
aside from that big issue, this game is okay. it leans into being a Stardew Valley-like, but that was unnecessary. as a result, I will bring up SDV a few times here. this game feels like a successor to Story of Seasons 3DS in particular. but that's better and more worth playing.
material management and crafting are obnoxious. while ore needs to be processed into bars in Stardew Valley, it's the single most used material you need to process. less relevant, there's also cloth, but it's much simpler, and processing it is one step, from wool to cloth. in Pioneers of Olive Town, you need to process basically everything. this means you end up with a big accumulation of lots of different stuff. wool gets turned into yarn, which gets turned into cloth. there's 3 types of these things. logs have to be processed into planks. there are like, 4 types of logs. coal needs to be processed for some things. clay has to be processed into bricks. the list goes on. it is very excessive, and with the limited amounts storage boxes hold, everything for crafting ends up taking up a massive amount of space. makers only doing stacks of 10 at a time sucks too. I heard they could only initially do one item at a time. for all you have to manage, that sounds like hell. I'm glad they changed it, but they should have made it a stack of 99 or something instead.
also much like Stardew Valley, there is limited animal food storage in this game. except it manages to be much worse here. you will eventually unlock a second food storage, and with one silo and one silage, you can store about 300 fodder total. the silage converts fodder into Deluxe Fodder. these buildings also take up a fair amount of space. letting animals outside doesn't require anything, they just graze on the nothing that's out there. so fodder only ends up consumed on rainy/stormy/snowy days. a bit less bad, but the annoyances persist.
gameplay is standard fare and perfectly fine outside of the material management and crafting. this game has sprinklers. later you get access to ponds, which are mostly a waste of space. I really don't know what they're exactly useful for. maybe you can fish at them for something special? I don't know. honestly, of all the things, the one I barely did was fish. mining kind of sucks. there are 3 whole separate mines. there didn't need to be. you do have to use all 3 of them to get all of the ores and such. the mines add these moles that become an incredibly annoying obstacle. it starts easy enough, but the biggest mine has so many moles and there's shockwaves to dodge and it just sucks. orichalcum is ridiculously hard to get a hold of, even via using the safe mining area you unlock, it's going to take you a while to get what you need. if you ship one, you can then buy it from the store, but it's expensive. you can also unlock it from the sprite shop, but it's still expensive there too, and getting the coins is a slow process.
I played on seedling mode. seeds were still pretty expensive, some being 400G per bag. and it's one bag per one tilled square. eventually you'll be making so much money that it hardly matters, but in the beginning it's kind of an obstacle. an odd choice overall.
this game felt way too easy to "finish." I was basically done by the end of the first year. the single thing I hadn't done was get married, but I could have if I'd made the decision on who to marry sooner. I also kinda kept forgetting to give Reina gifts...
in terms of how this game looks, I am really not a fan. there's a weird smooth and matte look to everything that I really dislike. and everyone has massive heads. once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I actually thought it was only the player model, honestly, but I see upon looking at screenshots that it extends to most NPCs as well. it's bad.
I know people say the characters in this game have... no character, but personally I disagree. I won't say they're not bland... most of them are, at least the marriage candidates. but I feel like it's standard fare for these games for the most part. eh. and it's not much, but I do appreciate that they can say more than one thing in a day. yes the dialogue gets repetitive, but all games like this have repeated dialogue like that.
there's a lot of interactions between different characters, and that's one of the things I really liked about this game. and those interactions are not solely related to the characters you can marry. and if you don't like it, all the cutscenes are skippable. this is the one aspect that other games should take notes from. it makes the world feel more... like a world. more interaction outside of cutscenes would be great... someday we'll get there.
the sprites are weird little creatures in this game, and I kind of love them. I would, of course, choose the little elf-like sprites any day, but I do love the weird little critters in this game. I wish the spirit lady was better. more interesting? something. there's so little interaction with her, it's a bummer. you cannot befriend her and she has way less dialogue than anyone else. side note, her voice clips are also way louder than anyone else's.
related, I am not so keen on the voice clips. thankfully this game lets you turn them off, the player ones in particular got really grating.
apparently this is fixable if you remove the DLC, but this issue can happen with other parts of the game. heard of it happening with the egg festival, and also happening in the mines. also, what if you wanted to marry a DLC character? bullshit. as a result of such an issue, I say this game kind of sucks ass, and is really not worth your time/money. even if you're prepared for the possibility of a cutscene not loading and being unable to progress, I still don't really recommend it. there are better games you can play that don't have this issue.
aside from that big issue, this game is okay. it leans into being a Stardew Valley-like, but that was unnecessary. as a result, I will bring up SDV a few times here. this game feels like a successor to Story of Seasons 3DS in particular. but that's better and more worth playing.
material management and crafting are obnoxious. while ore needs to be processed into bars in Stardew Valley, it's the single most used material you need to process. less relevant, there's also cloth, but it's much simpler, and processing it is one step, from wool to cloth. in Pioneers of Olive Town, you need to process basically everything. this means you end up with a big accumulation of lots of different stuff. wool gets turned into yarn, which gets turned into cloth. there's 3 types of these things. logs have to be processed into planks. there are like, 4 types of logs. coal needs to be processed for some things. clay has to be processed into bricks. the list goes on. it is very excessive, and with the limited amounts storage boxes hold, everything for crafting ends up taking up a massive amount of space. makers only doing stacks of 10 at a time sucks too. I heard they could only initially do one item at a time. for all you have to manage, that sounds like hell. I'm glad they changed it, but they should have made it a stack of 99 or something instead.
also much like Stardew Valley, there is limited animal food storage in this game. except it manages to be much worse here. you will eventually unlock a second food storage, and with one silo and one silage, you can store about 300 fodder total. the silage converts fodder into Deluxe Fodder. these buildings also take up a fair amount of space. letting animals outside doesn't require anything, they just graze on the nothing that's out there. so fodder only ends up consumed on rainy/stormy/snowy days. a bit less bad, but the annoyances persist.
gameplay is standard fare and perfectly fine outside of the material management and crafting. this game has sprinklers. later you get access to ponds, which are mostly a waste of space. I really don't know what they're exactly useful for. maybe you can fish at them for something special? I don't know. honestly, of all the things, the one I barely did was fish. mining kind of sucks. there are 3 whole separate mines. there didn't need to be. you do have to use all 3 of them to get all of the ores and such. the mines add these moles that become an incredibly annoying obstacle. it starts easy enough, but the biggest mine has so many moles and there's shockwaves to dodge and it just sucks. orichalcum is ridiculously hard to get a hold of, even via using the safe mining area you unlock, it's going to take you a while to get what you need. if you ship one, you can then buy it from the store, but it's expensive. you can also unlock it from the sprite shop, but it's still expensive there too, and getting the coins is a slow process.
I played on seedling mode. seeds were still pretty expensive, some being 400G per bag. and it's one bag per one tilled square. eventually you'll be making so much money that it hardly matters, but in the beginning it's kind of an obstacle. an odd choice overall.
this game felt way too easy to "finish." I was basically done by the end of the first year. the single thing I hadn't done was get married, but I could have if I'd made the decision on who to marry sooner. I also kinda kept forgetting to give Reina gifts...
in terms of how this game looks, I am really not a fan. there's a weird smooth and matte look to everything that I really dislike. and everyone has massive heads. once you see it, you cannot unsee it. I actually thought it was only the player model, honestly, but I see upon looking at screenshots that it extends to most NPCs as well. it's bad.
I know people say the characters in this game have... no character, but personally I disagree. I won't say they're not bland... most of them are, at least the marriage candidates. but I feel like it's standard fare for these games for the most part. eh. and it's not much, but I do appreciate that they can say more than one thing in a day. yes the dialogue gets repetitive, but all games like this have repeated dialogue like that.
there's a lot of interactions between different characters, and that's one of the things I really liked about this game. and those interactions are not solely related to the characters you can marry. and if you don't like it, all the cutscenes are skippable. this is the one aspect that other games should take notes from. it makes the world feel more... like a world. more interaction outside of cutscenes would be great... someday we'll get there.
the sprites are weird little creatures in this game, and I kind of love them. I would, of course, choose the little elf-like sprites any day, but I do love the weird little critters in this game. I wish the spirit lady was better. more interesting? something. there's so little interaction with her, it's a bummer. you cannot befriend her and she has way less dialogue than anyone else. side note, her voice clips are also way louder than anyone else's.
related, I am not so keen on the voice clips. thankfully this game lets you turn them off, the player ones in particular got really grating.